U.S.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to strengthen enforcement of existing trade rules and negotiate better trade deals than his predecessors had. With his national security tariffs on steel and aluminum, his safeguard tariffs on washing machines and solar components, his broad trade war with China, and the looming specter of new barriers for […]

Two back-to-back, stunning economic headlines arrived in less than twenty-four hours. The first appeared on March 5 in the Wall Street Journal: “U.S. Budget Gap Widened 77% in First Four Months of Fiscal Year.” Following on the heels of that shocker, Bloomberg on March 6 ran this headline: “U.S. Trade Gap Surged...

The exceptionally low unemployment rate is good news for American workers. But it contributes to a growing problem: companies can’t find enough employees. This puts downward pressure on corporate and U.S. economic growth.

In President Trump’s reckoning, international trade is a zero-sum game with distinct winners and losers. Exports are Team America’s points. Imports are the foreign team’s points. The trade account is the scoreboard, and the deficit on that scoreboard proves that the home team is losing at trade. Accordingly, the president considers blocking imports and promoting […]

The U.S. economy is estimated to grow by 3.1 percent this year, according to the Federal Reserve’s median rate, followed by 2.5 percent next year and 2 percent in 2020. The Wall Street Journal’s Economic Forecasting Survey of more than 60 economists indicates very similar projections.

With six months and counting before the UK-EU divorce becomes official, Britons understandably are frustrated by the absence of post-Brexit clarity. Genuine concern, lingering misgivings about the referendum, and a series of government missteps have invited justified criticism, but also heaps of hyperbole and fear-mongering from politicians and opinion leaders across the ideological spectrum.

For several months, President Trump has been vandalizing the global economy and subverting the rules of international trade with his wrecking ball of tariff indiscretions. Finally, someone in Congress is doing something to stop this menace. Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, introduced legislation on Wednesday that takes back some of the authority President […]

The claim that imported automobiles might represent some sort of threat to U.S. national security hardly merits even a moment’s thought, much less a formal inquiry. To President Trump — who has requested his Commerce Department investigate precisely this question — the inquiry provides a distraction from his mounting legal woes and, perhaps, the opportunity […]

Donald Trump was not the first U.S. presidential candidate to blame foreigners and their trade practices for America’s real and imagined economic woes. That is a time-honored tradition of U.S. electoral politics. But Trump is the first president — at least since Congress began delegating parts of its trade policymaking authority to the executive branch […]

Last week President Trump announced that he’ll impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum of 25 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Since the U.S. steel industry has suffered over the last few decades, this action might seem like a good idea — but is it? Here’s the reality...

The Council on Foreign Relations points out that as a result of The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) regional trade increased sharply over the treaty’s first two decades, “from roughly $290 billion in 1993 to more than $1.1 trillion in 2016. Cross-border investment has also surged, with U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) stock in...

On the campaign trail and into the first year of his presidency, Donald Trump has been a walking, talking billboard for protectionist nationalism. He promised 45 percent tariffs on imports from China, 35 percent levies on imports from Mexico, a requirement that U.S. oil and gas pipelines use only American steel, and the closure of […]

On the campaign trail and into the first year of his presidency, Donald Trump has been a walking, talking billboard for protectionist nationalism. He promised 45 percent tariffs on imports from China, 35 percent levies on imports from Mexico, a requirement that U.S. oil and gas pipelines use only American steel, and the closure of...

There’s no question that illegal immigrants tax our economy and deplete our government benefits, so they should be carefully vetted. We need to separate unskilled immigrants from those who come here legally on worker visas and possess the skills we need to grow our economy.

“Designed by Apple in California; Assembled in China” are the words engraved on the back of Apple’s ubiquitous iPods, iPads, and iPhones. Might that soon change? Foxconn, the Taiwan-headquartered company that does Apple’s assembling in China, announced last week that it will invest up to $10 billion in production facilities in Wisconsin.

Scapegoating trade for problems real and imagined has been a prominent part of American electoral politics for 25 years. So, during the campaign, when candidate Donald Trump referred to the North American Free Trade Agreement as “the worst trade deal ever negotiated,” his rhetoric wasn’t especially alarming.

Major economic trends in international trade, globalization and automation were strongly reflected in the November 8th election of President Donald Trump. They also were underlining factors in the United Kingdom’s June 23rd decision to withdraw from the European Union, known as Brexit, and in support of populist politicians in Europe. Why is this?

Trade frictions are nothing new to the U.S.-China relationship. Over the years they’ve ebbed and flowed, but were managed with enough deft to avoid major meltdowns. That seems likely to change under President Donald Trump, an economic nationalist who sees trade as a zero-sum game and the United States emerging “the winner” of a trade […]

President Donald Trump is pushing all the right buttons when it comes to an economic agenda for his administration: eliminate excessive regulations, reduce corporate taxes, repeal Obamacare, pursue a sane energy policy, and fix immigration. But what is puzzling is that Trump has expressed some opinions about trade that are troubling.

If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, where will President Trump turn when his “America First” policies lay waste to the very people he professes to be helping? The ideas conjured by “Buy American” may appeal to many of President Trump’s supporters, but the phrase is merely a euphemism for doling political spoils, featherbedding, […]